Walmart’s Affiliate Program – How to Become an Affiliate of the Major Retailer

If you are a blogger, influencer, or fan of shopping you’ll probably be enticed by what Affiliate Marketing has to offer. Afterall, you can refer others to your favorite products and services and make a living doing so. Walmart, which is one of the largest retailers in the world, has hosted their affiliate program for well over a decade now and it’s still going strong. Want to know more about what this program has to offer? Let’s take a look at Walmart’s Affiliate Program.

How to Become a Walmart Affiliate

If you casually look for affiliate programs on e-commerce websites and go directly to the bottom of the page, you’ll notice that most e-commerce retailers have the terms:

Affiliate Program

Referral Program

Our Affiliate Program

Partner Program

Note Best Buy’s Affiliate Program Location Here

If you check them out, these are links to a specific businesses’ affiliate portal. It’s just one of many ways users find an affiliate program, but within the industry, there are always ways of discovering new and interesting programs like Walmart.com. Here are some of the ways to discovering Affiliate Programs:

On the bottom of Web Pages

Outreach from an Affiliate Manager (if you have the traffic and background)

Searching on an Affiliate Network (i.e., Commission Junction)

Friends and Family

Review and News Websites

In total, because most users don’t scroll to the bottom of websites, or look around on networks, you’ll be happy to know that Affiliate Marketing is still quite a niche marketing aspect! Walmart recently has done a few facelifts to their e-commerce side of things to look more like Amazon, and therefore you may not find a link at the bottom of their site! Don’t worry it’s there…somewhere (here)!

Walmart.com’s Rakuten Linkshare Partnership

While we aren’t as big of fans of the Rakuten Linkshare Network anymore, since many brands are jumping ship to other networks, the Walmart relationship with Linkshare is still healthy today. This doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future. Afterall, if Walmart is acting like Amazon, they may change up things and design their affiliate program/network much as Amazon Associates does.

Nevertheless, you’ll find Walmart’s Affiliate Program on the Rakuten Linkshare network. You won’t be able to sign up anywhere else. Linkshare does require a few things for you to get started:

Tax ID

Full name

Business Address

Working Website

Basic Analytics (like Traffic Numbers) of website

Sure it’s a hassle signing up to Linkshare, but as a bonus you’ll get access to not only Walmart (not guaranteed to be approved) but several other noteworthy programs like:

Jet.com

Microsoft Store

Tastemade

Stockpile

Classpass

If Approved Proceed to Walmart.com’s Affiliate Tools

Walmart didn’t shy away from supplying affiliates and influencers with an abundance of tools, APIs (feeds), and graphics. Finding them on Linkshare is confusing, so instead head to Walmart’s Affiliate site –> https://affiliates.walmart.com

We don’t know why theres a separate landing page from the Linkshare network and then to Walmart’s own Affiliate Tool section

On the Walmart Affiliate Platform, you’ll find useful tools like:

Search widgets

Banners of most sizes

Sale and Clearance Feeds

Bestseller Ads

Much more!

Commission

Now that we’ve gotten most of the technical things out of the way, you are probably wondering what kinds of commission Walmart offers to their affiliates and influencers. The answer is complicated. Walmart has chosen to not provide a flat commission but to separate commissions based on category. So if you refer Electronics, for example, you’ll receive less commission than Fashion.

The Walmart BaseCommission looks like:

4% of Sales

1% if Sale is Electronics

1% if Sale is Video games

1% if Sale is Movies, Books, or Music

1% if Sale is Photo Order

For interested Walmart affiliates, you can always try to reach out to the Walmart’s Affiliate Manager to see if you can boost commission. It’s a possibility depending on your popularity and focus. Although we’ve worked with Walmart before and their managers seem to shift around a lot.

On an International note…you can also find a Canada and Mexico program within Linkshare also!

Our Review: It’s a Solid Program

Walmart has done a decent job adapting their affiliate program to today’s industry standards. We believe that the partnership with Linkshare is strong, but Walmart may benefit by going through their network much like what Amazon does. Commissions aren’t high, but you are referring and selling affordable products at a place everyone knows about.